Episode 02
* * *
Upon hearing the news of Nivelia’s bankruptcy, Marquis Caleo Deiamor hurried to his daughter’s room.
“Oh my, my daughter.”
What greeted him was the back of his daughter lying motionless on the floor.
The shoulders of the four-year-old CEO, who was left with only debt and inventory, seemed heavy.
Kaleo carefully sat down next to his lying daughter.
“Daughter, you said you were ruined?”
“I’m completely screwed….”
Nibelia answered listlessly.
“Life isn’t easy….”
“That’s life.”
Kaleo nodded and suggested.
“Daughter, would you like to have a drink with Dad?”
“Such sorrow should be washed away with a glass of cool milk,” said Kaleo, lifting up the drooping Nibelia.
“Nini, I’m so upset right now, my heart is burning. I’m going to drink some cold milk.”
“If you drink something cold, you’ll get a stomachache, so let’s drink something lukewarm.”
“Can I eat it with chocolate cookies?”
“Let’s dip cookies in lukewarm milk and eat them.”
“…Can I eat two?”
“Just one.”
“Ugh.”
Nibelia, staggering towards the restaurant, holding her father’s hand, looked like a very drunkard.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, the kitchen staff promptly brought us a glass of milk and a large chocolate cookie.
They had already heard the news of the young lady’s bankruptcy.
“Same thing for dad too.”
As per Nivelia’s order, a slightly larger glass of milk was placed in front of Kaleo.
The woman and the man clinked their glasses.
After taking a sip of the moderately cold milk, Nibelia cut a cookie in half and dipped it into the milk.
The cookies, dipped deep enough to wet even my fingers, quickly melted.
“dad!”
“huh?”
“There are chocolate cookies and milk, right?”
“Yeah, do you have cookies and milk?”
“Like this, like this? Then it’ll be incredibly delicious! And besides, huh? Aren’t chocolate cookies round and pretty?”
“I see. Are you as pretty as Nini?”
“Hehehe, that’s why Nini likes it!”
Nibelia, who was biting heavily on a cookie soaked in milk, laughed heartily.
Kaleo asked, wiping the milk dripping from her daughter’s hands with a handkerchief.
“Are you okay now? Are you no longer sad?”
“I’m still a little sad.”
Nibelia said, munching on a cookie.
“I worked hard, but I’m upset because I didn’t make any money.”
“I see. That makes sense.”
“I hate the world. I wish I could make less money than Danini.”
“…That’s too much to think about.”
Kaleo waited until Nibelia finished eating her cookies.
“Nini.”
“huh?”
“So you’re not going to do business anymore?”
“I will do it!”
Although today was a failure, Nibelia’s grand ambition still remained in her heart.
“I need to earn a lot of money so I can buy the wolf something delicious!”
The word “wolf” brought to mind Kaleo’s daughter’s favorite stuffed animal.
The name of the doll that Nivelia had been carrying around since she was a baby, when she couldn’t even hold up her head, was ‘Wolf’.
It was a handmade doll made from luxurious fabric dyed gold and the finest rubies. Initially in perfect condition, the doll was now nothing more than a tattered, grimy rag.
‘Sometimes, when I look at it, it seems like the doll is asking me to kill it…’
It’s probably been half a year since I last washed the doll, because even touching it for washing or repairing it causes Nibelia to go crazy.
Nibelia’s maid, Deter, is always looking for an opportunity to do laundry.
“The wolf would be in trouble without me. He’d be starving.”
“I see.”
“But making money isn’t easy.”
“That’s life.”
“Nini learned something about life today. Life is cruel….”
“You worked hard to make it so that you could do business, so I’m disappointed.”
Kaleo asked his daughter, who was resting her chin on the table and looking sad.
“Can I give you some advice, Dad?”
Nibelia’s eyes widened.
“Not as much as Mom, but Dad knows how to run a business. He helps Mom with this and that.”
“dad…!”
Moved, Nibelia quickly got down from the chair and hugged her father’s leg.
“Dad, it’s more useful than I thought!”
“Thank you for the compliment that made me lose all desire to help.”
* * *
The Dayamor women moved first.
“Go to Nini’s room!”
Arriving at her room, Nibelia prepared a notebook and crayons to write down what her father said.
Kaleo said.
“First, the cookie shape is too sloppy.”
Kaleo placed the cookies Nibelia had made side by side and compared them with the cookies that looked exactly like the ones he had just eaten.
“If you were the guest, which one would you eat?”
“This is big!”
“What did you make yourself?”
“…….”
“Don’t avoid eye contact like a guilty cat. Be honest.”
“Somewhat, somewhat like that….”
Nibelia, who confessed honestly, glanced at the cookies she had made.
“But, this is also delicious….”
“But the customers don’t know the taste.”
That’s exactly what Kaleo said.
“First-time buyers don’t know the taste, so they choose the prettier one. That’s human nature.”
“I see.”
Nibelia answered and scribbled something in her notebook. She drew a cookie by roughly coloring a circle in brown.
“What’s the second one?”
“How much did it cost to make the cookies, Nini?”
“wait for a sec….”
Nibelia got up from her seat and took something out of her desk drawer.
“This is the receipt.”
It was a receipt I had taken when purchasing the materials.
Kaleo asked, looking at the receipt.
“How much do cookies cost?”
“3 for 3,000 uba!”
“You spread out five fingers?”
“Oh, my mistake. Five thousand Uba!”
“So how many cookies did you make in total?”
“many!”
“Oh, I guess I’ll have to call Deter.”
Deter, who had been waiting outside the door, came in and explained.
“You made a total of 72 cookies. You secretly ate three of them because you were hungry…”
A total of 69.
If you bundle 3 together, there are 23.
“I sold four of them, leaving a total of 19 left. The lady kneaded the dough, but I baked it. You have to include my labor costs as well.”
“Deter is Nini’s friend, so I used it cheaply.”
“Because we’re friends, I have to pay more.”
Kaleo smiled bitterly after calculating this and that.
“As expected, the price of cookies is too cheap compared to the money spent on ingredients.”
Considering the labor wages and department store space, the price of Nibelia’s cookies was ridiculously cheap.
“You should get at least 25 thousand Uva for one cookie.”
“25,000 Uva is five 5,000 Uva.”
“Eek!”
Nibelia, surprised by the large sum of money, covered her round face with her bare hands.
Because I was holding my hand too tightly, my lips popped out like a carp and my cheeks peeked out between my fingers.
“Is it okay for Nini to touch that much money…?”
“It’s okay. You owe me a lot more than that.”
Deter offered comfort, not consolation.
Then Kaleo told us about his last mistake.
“I have to sell cookies to people, and the boss can’t hide.”
Kaleo told me that this was the biggest mistake.
“A boss needs to sell his products with confidence. Only then will customers trust him and buy from him.”
“That’s because Deter couldn’t sell it.”
“Yonsuk.”
Kaleo fed the snail a healthy diet.
“Customers feel safer when the owner sells the products himself.”
“Mom, you don’t sell things at department stores either?”
“At first, my mother also sold things herself.”
“Whew….”
A sigh that was not childlike escaped me.
Nibelia, her eyebrows furrowed, realized once again that earning other people’s money wasn’t easy.
“So what do we do now?”
“First, I need to pay off my debt.”
“Cheongsan means to clear away and resolve.”
Nibelia nodded at Deter’s secondary explanation.
“Pay off your debt!”
“Looking at it, the debt is approximately 128 million Uba….”
Kaleo looked down at his daughter with a very serious expression.
“Nini, if you can’t pay off this debt, you might end up on a fishing boat.”
“Oh, no!”
Nibelia fidgeted with a frightened face.
“If I get on a fishing boat, oh, oh, I’ll never see Mom and Dad again!”
“Otherwise, I’ll have to work hard, run errands, and help my employees with their work to slowly pay it back.”
“Isn’t there a way to pay it off all at once?”
“There is no such thing.”
“Life is tough.”
“…….”
Kaleo looked up at Deter with a look of interest on his face.
Deter quickly denied it.
“I didn’t teach you that.”
Nibelia, whose head was beginning to ache with thoughts of what lay ahead, suddenly remembered something.
He suddenly stood up from his seat and took something out of the drawer.
“Dad, write your name here.”
“huh?”
“Name here!”
“What is this?”
“My grandparents gave it to me. They said I could use this when I need to pay back a debt!”
Currently, Nibelia’s grandparents were on a trip to the forest with their grandson.
Kaleo looked at the documents Nibelia had handed him.
“…Huh, right.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
“My daughter is offering to be my guarantor.”
The document given by the child’s grandparents, that is, Kaleo’s parents, was a joint surety contract.
But Nibelia didn’t know what it was.
“What is that?”
“If I can’t pay my debt, the person whose name is written here will pay it on my behalf.”
“Wow, what a cool way!”
“Not cool at all.”
Kaleo refused to sign.
The debt of 128 million Uva still remained as Nivelia’s share.
* * *
There are no shortcuts to making money.
Eventually, Nibelia began to pay off her debts, penny by penny, by running errands for her family and helping her employees.
